Hanfstängl photo] [National Gallery, London
THE RETURN OF ULYSSES TO PENELOPE
[CHAPTER IX]
THE LIBRARY AT SIENA
DR. STEINMANN suggests, with great probability, that we may fix March as the month of Pintoricchio’s return to Siena in 1506, for in that month he took into his employ the Perugian painter, Eusebio di San Giorgio. This, no doubt, marks a fresh start, and the master now worked steadily on until the Library was completed.
There is little that is devotional in character about the Libreria in Siena. As the visitor passes the bronze doors, past the marble columns of pagan sculpture and Renaissance copy, he loses all sense of being in part of a sacred building. The chamber itself is singularly destitute of the ordinary objects of religious art. No Divine Persons, no evangelists, saints, or fathers—not an angel in the whole range of subjects. We have here one of those examples of historic fresco which were a feature common to fifteenth-century art, a popular way of decorating the living-halls of great seigneurs, such as the Palaces at Urbino and Mantua, or the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara.
We are expressly told that Pintoricchio was given the life of Æneas Sylvius by his secretary Campana, as a guide to his choice of events, but careful examination has shown certain variations and deviations from this life, pointing to some other authority in use; and on comparison we find that he certainly also had recourse to the Pope’s own memoirs, which supplied certain details and particulars not included in Campana’s work.
Dr. Schmarsow has made a long and exhaustive study of these frescoes with special reference to Pintoricchio’s relations with Raphael.[31] It is impossible to go as minutely into the question as this talented German has done, but it is one of great interest in artistic history, and no life of Pintoricchio would be complete without some reference to it.
[31] Raphael und Pinturicchio in Siena.